"The
actors do
justice to this
potent and insightful script, filling the screen
with explosive energy."

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Richard Linklater's (Slacker/Waking Life/Dazed
and
Confused)
edgy chamber drama Tape, is based on the
three-character play by
Stephen
Belber. It's a talky dramatization shot in real-time
and photographed
with
a handheld camcorder by both Linklater and Maryse
Alberti, who capture
the film's claustrophobic setting in a grainy but
intimate manner on
digital
video. The filmmaker succinctly points out that
objective reality is
only
subjective, as it follows the Rashomon-like theme of
trying to tell who
is telling the truth. There's also Brenda Lee's
telling song at the
film's
conclusion: "I'm Sorry I Was Such A Fool."

Two supposedly close friends from their high school
days,
Vince (Ethan
Hawke) and John Salter (Robert Sean Leonard), who have
kept in touch
since
graduating ten years ago, meet in Vince's motel room
in Lansing,
Michigan.
Vince is a slacker, small time drug dealer, and a
volunteer fireman in
Oakland (I thought they had a professional fire
department!), who has
come
to Lansing to help support his friend on what might be
the most
important
weekend in his life. John is a smug, pretentious,
aspiring filmmaker,
who
shot a film in the Lansing Film Festival. He's hoping
this will be his
big break, and has invited Vince and his girlfriend to
attend the
one-time
film screening. Vince is alone and informs John that
his girlfriend for
the last three years has left him because of his
violent tendencies and
reckless behavior. John, in a superior tone, lectures
the beer guzzling
and still immature friend. He tells him to get his
life together, that
he's no longer a kid at 28.

As the sharp conversation between the two becomes
more
heated, it
appears Vince is on a downward spiral and the better
dressed and more
polished
John is heading upward. But it soon becomes apparent
that Vince had
other
reasons for seeing John than what he lets on. He's
still troubled about
what happened to the love of his life, his old high
school girlfriend
Amy
Randall (Uma Thurman), who broke up with him because
she had a crush on
John. Vince is trying to get clear in his jealous mind
about an
incident
that happened one night, after he already had broken
up with Amy, where
John said he had sex with Amy when he was drunk at a
party. What
strikes
Vince as odd, is that he never saw Amy after that.
Vince believes a
date
rape occurred and tries to get his friend to tell him
exactly what
happened.
Vince is seething inside because he went out a long
time with Amy and
they
never had sex, even though it was Amy's first
relationship and he
wanted
so much to make love to her.

To loosen the stiff John up, Vince induces him to
smoke
pot. And,
after much badgering and questioning of John's
version, much like a
prosecutor,
John states that he coerced her verbally into having
sex. The manic
Vince
then gets the awkwardly apologetic filmmaker to say he
held her down
and
raped her. To John's astonishment he gets this
confession on tape,
which
he threatens to give to Amy unless John apologizes to
her. Vince also
tells
him that Amy is working in her Michigan college town
as an assistant
district
attorney; and, even though, he hasn't seen her for
five years, he has
invited
her to the motel. Amy enters the motel room at the
film's 50-minute
mark,
and the three high school friends are confronted with
facing up to
their
past. The self-composed Amy and the chagrined John
have different
reasons
and interpretations about what may--or may not--have
happened, as the
small-minded
but crafty Vince massages his own feelings and tries
to understand what
each of them is saying that satisfies his own point of
view.

The three actors do a marvelous job of working
together and
conveying
their passions, hurts, and sense of being. They do
this despite none of
them being particularly sympathetic figures.
Linklater's film is much
in
the same vein as what filmmakers and playwrights Mamet
and LaBute are
regularly
doing, creating intelligent scenarios for adult
audiences. The actors
do
justice to this potent and insightful script, filling
the screen with
explosive
energy.